Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Key features: for one thing, the first math assignment, due 9/10, is posted there. For another, I give a link to a couple of the Mathematica notebooks I've used in class, so you can download them and modify them yourself.

One of the programs we're using for this course, MaxMSP, is available as a free 30-day demo from cycling74.com. You can download all the documentation for free as well. Please go here to download.

For Monday, please try to work through the first few MSP tutorials; if you can get all the way to Tutorial 6, that would be terrific. Both the tutorial patches and pdf files are found in the Documentation folder; the pdf file you need is called MSP46TutorialsAndTopics.pdf. You're also welcome to look through the Max tutorials as well, which are useful since they are more basic. Remember, the "Max" part of the program is for control data (things like on/off, addition/subtraction, etc.), while the "MSP" part of the program is for audio data, at 44.1 kHz; all of the MSP objects have a ~ after their name.

And finally, we would like you all to read the first chapter of the text for this course, Dave Benson's Music: A Mathematical Offering, available here as a free pdf file.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Professor Ando and I are both excited about this course; although we've taught many courses on math or music, we've never taught a course on both, so we will be relying on your input to shape and refine it. As part of Music 199 we will be hosting this blog; part of your homework will consist of posting comments and other material.

For the course syllabus, click here. Before Wednesday, please post a comment introducing yourself to the rest of the class: your major; any background you have in math and/or music; and what you hope to gain from this course.